Research on the Effects of Media Violence Whether or not exposure to media violence causes increased levels of aggression and violence in young people is the perennial question of media effects research. Some experts, like University of Michigan professor L. Rowell Huesmann, argue that fifty years of evidence show "that exposure to media violence causes children to behave more aggressively and affects them as adults years later." Others, like Jonathan Freedman of the University of Toronto, maintain that "the scientific evidence simply does not show that watching violence either produces violence in people, or desensitizes them to it." Many Studies, Many Conclusions Andrea Martinez at the University of Ottawa conducted a comprehensive review of the scientific literature for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) in 1994. She concluded that the lack of consensus about media effects reflects three "grey areas" or constraints contained in the research itself. First, media violence is notoriously hard to define and measure. Some experts who track violence in television programming, such as George Gerbner of Temple University, define violence as the act (or threat) of injuring or killing someone, independent of the method used or the surrounding context. Accordingly, Gerber includes cartoon violence in his data-set. But others, such as University of Laval professors Guy Paquette and Jacques de Guise, specifically exclude cartoon violence from their research because of its comical and unrealistic presentation. Second, researchers disagree over the type of relationship the data supports. Some argue that exposure to media violence causes aggression. Others say that the two are associated, but that there is no causal connection. (That both, for instance, may be caused by some third factor.) And others say the data supports the conclusion that there is no relationship between the two at all. Third, even those who agree that there is a connection between media violence and aggression disagree about how the one effects the other. Some say that the mechanism is a psychological one, rooted in the ways we learn. For example, Huesmann argues that children develop "cognitive scripts" that guide their own behaviour by imitating the actions of media heroes. As they watch violent shows, children learn to internalize scripts that use violence as an appropriate method of problem-solving. Other researchers argue that it is the physiological effects of media violence that cause aggressive behaviour. Exposure to violent imagery is linked to increased heart rate, faster respiration and higher blood pressure. Some think that this simulated "fight-or-flight" response predisposes people to act aggressively in the real world. Still others focus on the ways in which media violence primes or cues pre-existing aggressive thoughts and feelings. They argue that an individual’s desire to strike out is justified by media images in which both ...

1. Research on the Effects of Media Violence
Whether or not exposure to media violence causes increased
levels of aggression and violence in young people is the
perennial question of media effects research. Some experts, like
University of Michigan professor L. Rowell Huesmann, argue
that fifty years of evidence show "that exposure to media
violence causes children to behave more aggressively and
affects them as adults years later." Others, like Jonathan
Freedman of the University of Toronto, maintain that "the
scientific evidence simply does not show that watching violence
either produces violence in people, or desensitizes them to it."
Many Studies, Many Conclusions
Andrea Martinez at the University of Ottawa conducted a
comprehensive review of the scientific literature for the
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications
Commission (CRTC) in 1994. She concluded that the lack of
consensus about media effects reflects three "grey areas" or
constraints contained in the research itself.
First, media violence is notoriously hard to define and measure.
Some experts who track violence in television programming,
such as George Gerbner of Temple University, define violence
as the act (or threat) of injuring or killing someone, independent
of the method used or the surrounding context. Accordingly,
Gerber includes cartoon violence in his data-set. But others,
such as University of Laval professors Guy Paquette and
Jacques de Guise, specifically exclude cartoon violence from
their research because of its comical and unrealistic
presentation.
Second, researchers disagree over the type of relationship the
data supports. Some argue that exposure to media violence
causes aggression. Others say that the two are associated, but

2. that there is no causal connection. (That both, for instance, may
be caused by some third factor.) And others say the data
supports the conclusion that there is no relationship between the
two at all.
Third, even those who agree that there is a connection between
media violence and aggression disagree about how the one
effects the other. Some say that the mechanism is a
psychological one, rooted in the ways we learn. For example,
Huesmann argues that children develop "cognitive scripts" that
guide their own behaviour by imitating the actions of media
heroes. As they watch violent shows, children learn to
internalize scripts that use violence as an appropriate method of
problem-solving.
Other researchers argue that it is the physiological effects of
media violence that cause aggressive behaviour. Exposure to
violent imagery is linked to increased heart rate, faster
respiration and higher blood pressure. Some think that this
simulated "fight-or-flight" response predisposes people to act
aggressively in the real world.
Still others focus on the ways in which media violence primes
or cues pre-existing aggressive thoughts and feelings. They
argue that an individual’s desire to strike out is justified by
media images in which both the hero and the villain use
violence to seek revenge, often without consequences.
In her final report to the CRTC, Martinez concluded that most
studies support "a positive, though weak, relation between
exposure to television violence and aggressive behaviour."
Although that relationship cannot be "confirmed
systematically," she agrees with Dutch researcher Tom Van der
Voot who argues that it would be illogical to conclude that "a
phenomenon does not exist simply because it is found at times
not to occur, or only to occur under certain circumstances."

3. What the Researchers Are Saying
The lack of consensus about the relationship between media
violence and real-world aggression has not impeded ongoing
research. Here’s a sampling of conclusions drawn to date, from
the various research strands:
Research strand: Children who consume high levels of media
violence are more likely to be aggressive in the real world
In 1956, researchers took to the laboratory to compare the
behaviour of 24 children watching TV. Half watched a violent
episode of the cartoon Woody Woodpecker, and the other 12
watched the non-violent cartoon The Little Red Hen. During
play afterwards, the researchers observed that the children who
watched the violent cartoon were much more likely to hit other
children and break toys.
Six years later, in 1963, professors A. Badura, D. Ross and S.A.
Ross studied the effect of exposure to real-world violence,
television violence, and cartoon violence. They divided 100
preschool children into four groups. The first group watched a
real person shout insults at an inflatable doll while hitting it
with a mallet. The second group watched the incident on
television. The third watched a cartoon version of the same
scene, and the fourth watched nothing.
When all the children were later exposed to a frustrating
situation, the first three groups responded with more aggression
than the control group. The children who watched the incident
on television were just as aggressive as those who had watched
the real person use the mallet; and both were more aggressive
than those who had only watched the cartoon.
Over the years, laboratory experiments such as these have
consistently shown that exposure to violence is associated with
increased heartbeat, blood pressure and respiration rate, and a

4. greater willingness to administer electric shocks to inflict pain
or punishment on others. However, this line of enquiry has been
criticized because of its focus on short term results and the
artificial nature of the viewing environment.
Other scientists have sought to establish a connection between
media violence and aggression outside the laboratory. For
example, a number of surveys indicate that children and young
people who report a preference for violent entertainment also
score higher on aggression indexes than those who watch less
violent shows. L. Rowell Huesmann reviewed studies conducted
in Australia, Finland, Poland, Israel, Netherlands and the United
States. He reports, "the child most likely to be aggressive would
be the one who (a) watches violent television programs most of
the time, (b) believes that these shows portray life just as it is,
[and] (c) identifies strongly with the aggressive characters in
the shows."
A study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2003
found that nearly half (47 per cent) of parents with children
between the ages of 4 and 6 report that their children have
imitated aggressive behaviours from TV. However, it is
interesting to note that children are more likely to mimic
positive behaviours — 87 per cent of kids do so.
Recent research is exploring the effect of new media on
children’s behaviour. Craig Anderson and Brad Bushman of
Iowa State University reviewed dozens of studies of video
gamers. In 2001, they reported that children and young people
who play violent video games, even for short periods, are more
likely to behave aggressively in the real world; and that both
aggressive and non-aggressive children are negatively affected
by playing.
In 2003, Craig Anderson and Iowa State University colleague
Nicholas Carnagey and Janie Eubanks of the Texas Department

5. of Human Services reported that violent music lyrics increased
aggressive thoughts and hostile feelings among 500 college
students. They concluded, "There are now good theoretical and
empirical reasons to expect effects of music lyrics on aggressive
behavior to be similar to the well-studied effects of exposure to
TV and movie violence and the more recent research efforts on
violent video games."
Research Strand: Children who watch high levels of media
violence are at increased risk of aggressive behaviour as adults
In 1960, University of Michigan Professor Leonard Eron studied
856 grade three students living in a semi-rural community in
Columbia County, New York, and found that the children who
watched violent television at home behaved more aggressively
in school. Eron wanted to track the effect of this exposure over
the years, so he revisited Columbia County in 1971, when the
children who participated in the 1960 study were 19 years of
age. He found that boys who watched violent TV when they
were eight were more likely to get in trouble with the law as
teenagers.
When Eron and Huesmann returned to Columbia County in
1982, the subjects were 30 years old. They reported that those
participants who had watched more violent TV as eight-year-
olds were more likely, as adults, to be convicted of serious
crimes, to use violence to discipline their children, and to treat
their spouses aggressively.
Professor Monroe Lefkowitz published similar findings in 1971.
Lefkowitz interviewed a group of eight-year-olds and found that
the boys who watched more violent TV were more likely to act
aggressively in the real world. When he interviewed the same
boys ten years later, he found that the more violence a boy
watched at eight, the more aggressively he would act at age
eighteen.

6. Columbia University professor Jeffrey Johnson has found that
the effect is not limited to violent shows. Johnson tracked 707
families in upstate New York for 17 years, starting in 1975. In
2002, Johnson reported that children who watched one to three
hours of television each day when they were 14 to 16 years old
were 60 per cent more likely to be involved in assaults and
fights as adults than those who watched less TV.
Kansas State University professor John Murray concludes, "The
most plausible interpretation of this pattern of correlations is
that early preference for violent television programming and
other media is one factor in the production of aggressive and
antisocial behavior when the young boy becomes a young man."
However, this line of research has attracted a great deal of
controversy. Pullitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes has
attacked Eron’s work, arguing that his conclusions are based on
an insignificant amount of data. Rhodes claims that Eron had
information about the amount of TV viewed in 1960 for only 3
of the 24 men who committed violent crimes as adults years
later. Rhodes concludes that Eron’s work is "poorly conceived,
scientifically inadequate, biased and sloppy if not actually
fraudulent research."
Guy Cumberbatch, head of the Communications Research
Group, a U.K. social policy think tank, has equally harsh words
for Johnson’s study. Cumberbatch claims Johnson’s group of 88
under-one-hour TV watchers is "so small, it's aberrant." And, as
journalist Ben Shouse points out, other critics say that
Johnson’s study "can’t rule out the possibility that television is
just a marker for some unmeasured environmental or
psychological influence on both aggression and TV habits."
Research Strand: The introduction of television into a
community leads to an increase in violent behaviour
Researchers have also pursued the link between media violence

7. and real life aggression by examining communities before and
after the introduction of television. In the mid 1970s, University
of British Columbia professor Tannis McBeth Williams studied
a remote village in British Columbia both before and after
television was introduced. She found that two years after TV
arrived, violent incidents had increased by 160 per cent.
Researchers Gary Granzberg and Jack Steinbring studied three
Cree communities in northern Manitoba during the 1970s and
early 1980s. They found that four years after television was
introduced into one of the communities, the incidence of fist
fights and black eyes among the children had increased
significantly. Interestingly, several days after an episode of
Happy Days aired, in which one character joined a gang called
the Red Demons, children in the community created rival gangs,
called the Red Demons and the Green Demons, and the conflict
between the two seriously disrupted the local school.
University of Washington Professor Brandon Centerwall noted
that the sharp increase in the murder rate in North America in
1955 occurred eight years after television sets began to enter
North American homes. To test his hypothesis that the two were
related, he examined the murder rate in South Africa where,
prior to 1975, television was banned by the government. He
found that twelve years after the ban was lifted, murder rates
skyrocketed.
University of Toronto Professor Jonathan Freedman has
criticized this line of research. He points out that Japanese
television has some of the most violent imagery in the world,
and yet Japan has a much lower murder rate than other
countries, including Canada and the United States, which have
comparatively less violence on TV.
Research Strand: Media violence stimulates fear in some
children

8. A number of studies have reported that watching media violence
frightens young children, and that the effects of this may be
long lasting.
In 1998, Professors Singer, Slovak, Frierson and York surveyed
2,000 Ohio students in grades three through eight. They report
that the incidences of psychological trauma (including anxiety,
depression and post-traumatic stress) increased in proportion to
the number of hours of television watched each day.
A 1999 survey of 500 Rhode Island parents led by Brown
University professor Judith Owens revealed that the presence of
a television in a child’s bedroom makes it more likely that the
child will suffer from sleep disturbances. Nine per cent of all
the parents surveyed reported that their children have
nightmares because of a television show at least once a week.
Tom Van der Voort studied 314 children aged nine through
twelve in 1986. He found that although children can easily
distinguish cartoons, westerns and spy thrillers from reality,
they often confuse realistic programmes with the real world.
When they are unable to integrate the violence in these shows
because they can’t follow the plot, they are much more likely to
become anxious. This is particularly problematic because the
children reported that they prefer realistic programmes, which
they equate with fun and excitement. And, as Jacques de Guise
reported in 2002, the younger the child, the less likely he or she
will be able to identify violent content as violence.
In 1999, Professors Joanne Cantor and K. Harrison studied 138
university students, and found that memories of frightening
media images continued to disturb a significant number of
participants years later. Over 90 per cent reported they
continued to experience fright effects from images they viewed
as children, ranging from sleep disturbances to steadfast
avoidance of certain situations.

9. Research Strand: Media violence desensitizes people to real
violence
A number of studies in the 1970’s showed that people who are
repeatedly exposed to media violence tend to be less disturbed
when they witness real world violence, and have less sympathy
for its victims. For example, Professors V.B. Cline, R.G. Croft,
and S. Courrier studied young boys over a two-year period. In
1973, they reported that boys who watch more than 25 hours of
television per week are significantly less likely to be aroused by
real world violence than those boys who watch 4 hours or less
per week.
When researchers Fred Molitor and Ken Hirsch revisited this
line of investigation in 1994, their work confirmed that children
are more likely to tolerate aggressive behaviour in the real
world if they first watch TV shows or films that contain violent
content.
Research Strand: People who watch a lot of media violence tend
to believe that the world is more dangerous than it is in reality
George Gerbner has conducted the longest running study of
television violence. His seminal research suggests that heavy
TV viewers tend to perceive the world in ways that are
consistent with the images on TV. As viewers’ perceptions of
the world come to conform with the depictions they see on TV,
they become more passive, more anxious, and more fearful.
Gerbner calls this the "Mean World Syndrome."
Gerbner’s research found that those who watch greater amounts
of television are more likely to:
· overestimate their risk of being victimized by crime
· believe their neighbourhoods are unsafe

10. · believe "fear of crime is a very serious personal problem"
· assume the crime rate is increasing, even when it is not
André Gosselin, Jacques de Guise and Guy Paquette decided to
test Gerbner’s theory in the Canadian context in 1997. They
surveyed 360 university students, and found that heavy
television viewers are more likely to believe the world is a more
dangerous place. However, they also found heavy viewers are
not more likely to actually feel more fearful.
Research Strand: Family attitudes to violent content are more
important than the images themselves
A number of studies suggest that media is only one of a number
of variables that put children at risk of aggressive behaviour.
For example, a Norwegian study that included 20 at-risk
teenaged boys found that the lack of parental rules regulating
what the boys watched was a more significant predictor of
aggressive behaviour than the amount of media violence they
watched. It also indicated that exposure to real world violence,
together with exposure to media violence, created an "overload"
of violent events. Boys who experienced this overload were
more likely to use violent media images to create and
consolidate their identities as members of an anti-social and
marginalized group.
On the other hand, researchers report that parental attitudes
towards media violence can mitigate the impact it has on
children. Huesmann and Bacharach conclude, "Family attitudes
and social class are stronger determinants of attitudes toward
aggression than is the amount of exposure to TV, which is
nevertheless a significant but weaker predictor."